There’s a masterclass sequence in Creepy (2016) that shows off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s command with visually increasing uneasiness. A retired detective now a college professor Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima from Drive My Car) is working with his former partner Nogami (Masahiro Higashide) on a cold case, a missing family who disappeared five years ago. Within the university building, Takakura interviews the remaining family member, Saki (Haruna Kawaguchi) and the sequence begins in the clear afternoon, light coming in through the glass windows where we can see the students congregate in the square outside.

When a film communicates two emotions happening across a character’s face, all in the one shot, the magic trick of that. In the Mario Bava directed film, The Whip and The Body (1963), there’s a tre…

After seeing the repulsive yet effective thriller, Tenement, I was interested to see more of director Roberta Findlay’s mainstream 1980s genre work, after a previous decade of working in exploitation and pornography. The Oracle (1985) is a low-budget supernatural horror movie that uses the planchette as its hook - a silver artificial hand in a book that works like an Ouija board, in that if you guide the hand will automatically write on paper, a getaway to the other side and ghosts seeking to communicate.

Four Of The Apocalypse (1975) is a late-period spaghetti western, as the Italian genre was on the decline in the 1970s, directed by Lucio Fulci. Even though this before Fulci's 'Gates of Hell' trilogy, and some of the more gnarlier movies that would make his name as a horror filmmaker (Zombi 2, The New York Ripper), I still assumed there would be a grotesque edge to this tale.

Creaky mansions. Dark and stormy nights. People investigating by candle light. Someone jumping out of the shadows wearing a skull mask. Basic pleasures from the Spanish horror movie, Night Of The Skull (1974), just one of the hundred movies directed by Jess Franco, a gothic murder mystery with light giallo vibes. A family of aristocrats contest a will for a murdered patriarch, and what do you know, the killing continues!

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Eileen (2023) is a character study. It’s also about stretching out the tension. The question keeps occurring: where is all this going? It’s the mid-1960s, it’s wintery and grey Massachusetts. Eileen works as a secretary in a prison. She looks after an alcoholic ex-cop father. She has daydreams about sex, or about killing her father. As he says to her: “There are people who are like movie stars, they do things… and then there’s everyone else, they’re just there.

“He must have been hit by spontaneous combustion, I’ve read about that shit…” A long time ago, I remember being over at a friend’s house, and they were working on a low-budget horror short, and played it for me on a VCR. Watching Things (1989) feels like that experience but taken to a transcendent level. Especially when in the movie, there are scenes where the characters watch a cheap horror movie on TV, making comments and drinking beers on the couch.

The Official Home of On Cinema at the Cinema

Saxophone is the weapon of choice for Teddy Robin’s score to City On Fire (1987). I couldn’t help but think of the David Sanborn sax sound to the Lethal Weapon soundtrack. What I love about Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s (and into the 1990s) is that circuit loop, of taking on influences from western cinema (saxophone for a cop thriller) and in turn influencing western cinema (dynamic action and stunts, cool iconography).

ALT: a sign that says a nightmare on elm street

Sex, murder, alligators, Bill Murray in a neck brace - this swampy neo-noir erotic thriller has it all!

Sex, murder, alligators, Bill Murray in a neck brace - this swampy neo-noir erotic thriller has it all!

This film is dedicated to millions who love Bruce Lee. The Dragon Lives Again (1977) opens with this text, and within the next ten minutes, the character of “Bruce Lee” is lying on a slab in the underworld after his death, and there’s an erection joke. Later in the movie, Bruce Lee talks about fooling around and apologises to his wife "Linda" for his cheating on her.